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It's quiet in the apartment with Enobaria at work all day. Johanna tries to do the cleaning, so at least she's contributing something to their household, but there's hardly anything in their apartment, so even that only takes part of their morning. She uses their ration cards to get food with the list Enobaria leaves and is back by lunch, and spends an hour laying down to cool off again, because the heat in District 2 was no joke.
Then she takes the medication the doctor gave her: one pill for nausea and one for pain, and she makes something to eat. The pain pill barely scratches the surface, and her eternal headache continues to pulse like a pickaxe atop her head, sometimes extending down her spine and making her stumble, or sometimes shooting behind her eyes and making her vision go blurry for a few seconds. But the nausea medication works well enough, and she can eat, finally, and this is a pleasure all in itself, because the food in District 2 is like nothing she's ever had.
There are warm handpies at the market, and fresh fruit. She has yet to try all the kinds. There are chilis and chilis and chilis, and despite the heat, she's growing to enjoy them, in stews and in burritos and in whatever dish Enobaria wants to make that night. Since Enobaria is at work, she just makes eggs for lunch, with chilis and cheese, and eats about half the portion she made, but it's more than she's eaten in months, and it feels amazing after the intractable nausea.
Once this is done, though, she's just sitting in the apartment again, and she wonders what to do. She has hours before Enobaria gets home, and she can't just go wander outside, she'd melt. The invitation from Enobaria's nieces comes back to her, and she thinks she'd have trouble finding the way, if it weren't such a straight shot. She walks over, and Ophelia answers the door, smiling shyly at her. "Is is alright if I come in?" she asks. "You can call your mom to check, if you need to."
Ophelia lets her in and then calls Antonia to let her know. "Mom says you can stay," she says, "But we have to do our homework before we do anything else."
Johanna nods. Camellia has come over now, too, still in her stiffly ironed school uniform, and she tugs on Johanna's hand. "Come see my spelling test!" she says. "I got everything right!"
Johanna goes and sits at the table with them, and Ophelia brings her a glass of lemonade to match with the glasses the girls each had. "Can I have an old test?" she asks. "I'll cover your answers and try my best."
Working with Ophelia and Camellia is nice, because they're so young, they have no idea that she's an idiot when it comes to school work. They might giggle if she spells something terribly, but they don't know that most adults wouldn't make that mistake. They just show her the right way to spell it, and might even tell her the hint their teacher showed them to remember the spelling, and move on. It's the same for math. There's no shame when she learns with the girls.
"Why is your hair short?" Camellia asks, as she's putting her books away.
Johanna hadn't been expecting this question, and Ophelia seems to pick up on the fact that this is rude, from the glare she shoots her sister.
"During the war, some bad men cut off my hair," she says.
"Oh," Camellia says. "If it was longer, you could get my mommy to make it pretty."
"Yeah."
She leaves, telling them she'll come back the next day, and she comes back only a few minutes before Enobaria. Enobaria is dirty from working in the fields, but she's smiling. "I am starting to understand it," she says. She's been working at the vineyard for about two weeks, and she has come home with stories of great affection for the old man who runs it and the grapes themselves. To Johanna, it sounds terrible - all day under the hot sun, and such precise conditions just to make a bottle of wine. But to Enobaria, it was fulfilling.
"I was going to walk out to the memorial, want to come along?" Enobaria drinks a glass of water as she asks, and Johanna nods. She feels well enough, and doing anything with Enobaria is nice.
They take the tram a couple stops towards where the Nut used to stand, then follow a path worn in the grass towards the mountain that now stood dead and empty. There are hundreds of stones coming out of the red dirt at the base of the mountain, the orange sun reflecting off of them. Each was carved with a different name, and many had pictures, flowers, and other little trinkets laid at their bases. They walked slowly, from one end to the other, Enobaria taking her time reading each.
"Is your family here?" Johanna asks, the question feeling stupid and obvious even as she asks it.
Enobaria nods. "My mother, at the end here. My brother, in the middle. My sister, down at the end. Antonia and the girls have left them chilis and fresh flowers."
Johanna's family is years dead, the ache now dull instead of the sharp, ripping pain it once was. But she still remembers it: how it felt to lose everyone she loved and just because of the whims of the Capitol. She grabs Enobaria's hand. "I'm sorry. I wish it was different." What could she say that would make it any better?
They go back home, and Johanna is sweating a bit too, now.
"I'm going to shower, want to come?" Enobaria says this so casually, Johanna almost doesn't comprehend it. But the words click in her brain, and she realizes what is said: an invitation to shower together. To get naked and get clean together. Enobaria had called them girlfriends, there really shouldn't be anything to be nervous about now. She was Johanna Mason, the Victor who stripped down before anyone could ask her to, to put herself on display so that no one could buy her company just to learn what is hidden under those clothes. But now she's different, she's less, and she's far from the perfect beauty of her Capitol days.
And she'd seen Enobaria naked, of course. She'd seen her naked in terrible conditions, in her worst moments, perhaps. But she knows what Enobaria is asking here is different. They are close now, since the prison, in a different way, and Enobaria is asking out of an actual desire for intimacy.
She must have paused too long over the question, because Enobaria comes back out to the living room, half-undressed in her linen pants and her bra. "You don't have to, no pressure," she says, her voice gentle.
"No, I… want to," she chokes out, somehow. How could she explain that she was the inadequate one? She was the one who was scarred and emaciated, with short, choppy hair. What had she ever done for Enobaria, compared to the care Enobaria had given her? But Enobaria is asking for this, and Johanna has no reason to decline, so she follows.
The shower feels good, after the errands and leaning over the table to study. Even her eternal headache is eased by the water. And Enobaria is as beautiful as ever, moreso, standing naked in front of her, with long legs and dark skin, her perfect breasts, the curve of her hips. She turns to adjust the dial, and Johanna reaches out to hug her from behind. "Is this ok?" she asks, suddenly afraid she's done too much, afraid to touch someone who's been touched too much, afraid to be another unwanted hand.
But Enobaria grabs her hands and pulls her closer, pressing their bodies more tightly together. "Yes, it's fine," she says. And then she turns around so they're facing each other again, pressed together, and Enobaria leans back just enough to look at Johanna's ribs, on the right side. "Is this my knife?" she asks, her finger pressing along a scar.
Johanna nods. It felt like so long ago that the Quarter Quell ended. That she was prepared to fight Enobaria to the death so that Katniss could live. "I barely even remember that."
Enobaria kneels, kissing the scar, and then moves centrally to kiss Johanna's sternum. And then Johanna leans down to catch her lips, to taste Enobaria after all this time, and she cannot get enough.
They finish showering, somehow, and she goes to Enobaria's bed, desperate to stay close. She wants to touch; she wants to be touched. Some latent sexuality that has been dormant since before the Games is leaking out of her now, and she is aching with want. Everything since the Games has been pain, the idea of pleasure has her pressing her legs together, rolling on the bed. And there's Enobaria, perhaps the hottest woman she has ever met. She imagines what she looks like when she comes, and needs to see it in real life.
Enobaria smiles. "What are you thinking about?" she asks.
Johanna can't look at her. It's impossible, she's too much. But she also can't lie, with Enobaria beside her, kissing her neck. "What kind of face you'd make…" she says, trailing off.
Enobaria laughs, her hands trailing down. "Maybe you can find out. In a bit."
And Johanna wonders if she had been aroused, if she just hadn't realized it, because her body is responding to every touch from Enobaria. Or maybe she's just that good. But Enobaria's tongue is circling her nipple, and one of her hands is at her slit, spreading moisture up along her clit, and she's jumping with the sensation every time her fingers pass over it, and her other hand is at Johanna's mouth, her fingers curling inside so Johanna has no choice but to suck on them.
And then a finger slips inside her vagina, and then two, pumping in and out just for a bit until they come up again to circle around her clit, and the tongue at her nipple turns to suction as Enobaria sucks, and then the sensation fades as her fingers slip back inside.
"Why did you stop?" Johanna says, around fingers in her mouth.
"Because I didn't want you to come in thirty seconds," she laughs. And so she continues it again and again, enough pressure on her clit to take her to the edge, and then back to pushing her fingers in and out. Johanna can feel herself losing touch, her hips rising off the mattress for more contact, and she wants to scream in frustration. Finally, Enobaria pushes a third finger inside of her, and takes the hand out of her mouth and moves it to her clit, giving her everything she wants, all at once.
Three fingers push in and out of her while two more swirl in circles around her clit. Enobaria's tongue continues at her breast, and she feels herself cresting the wave. Her thighs clamp together, but there's nothing to them anymore, and Enobaria's hands continue to move. Her mouth comes up to capture Johanna's, and Johanna kisses her as she feels the movement start to slow, Enobaria's hands guiding her back down to earth. It felt just barely too much, but she is able to hang on, and now she is left wondering if she could have handled more.
She looks at Enobaria as she pulls out the kiss, a little afraid: this woman would surely push her to her limits. "Again?" Enobaria asks, as if she hasn't just felt the most intense orgasm she'd felt in years.
"Maybe in a little bit," she says. She turns on her side, trying to pull her thoughts back in order, but the only thought that forms is the one from before, but she wonders if Enobaria had touched her first because she was still hesitant about other people touching her. "It's alright if you don't want me to touch you," she says.
Enobaria turns on her side also, so they're close. "Jo, I like doing that, it turns me on. I like giving sometimes more than I like getting. But I do want you," she says.
"Ok, well tonight you're getting also."
She wants to taste Enobaria. She'd had the thought since the moment Enobaria kneeled in the shower, the moment it occurred to her that she could kneel between Enobaria's legs. She does it now, at the end of the bed, pulling Enobaria towards her. She licks her thighs, teases her with a light touch, but Enobaria pushes herself closer. "It's ok," she says. "I am plenty turned on from watching you just now."
And so Johanna dives in, her tongue pressing into Enobaria's folds, circling her clit, pushing inside of her. She pushes in with two fingers and focuses her tongue on her clit, and Enobaria begins to moan. It's a beautiful sound, and she keeps it up, pumping her fingers in and out, and moving her tongue in the way that makes her moan louder. She would have time to tease in the future, or learn the intricacies of what Enobaria likes best. For now, she just wants to get her there. And Enobaria comes against her, her thighs trembling and pressing closed, and Johanna lifts her head just in time to see her face, eyebrows furrowed, mouth open in bliss.
"God, you're sexy," she says, coming up to lay beside her.
"You're unrelenting."
"I can back off, if you like."
"Do you know how long I've thought about that?"
Johanna is taken aback by this, by the thought that Enobaria had even considered having sex with her. Because of course she'd considered it, but Enobaria was beautiful, capable, a whole person with a job who could cook and had skills. Johanna was just… Johanna, absolutely useless in comparison. "No you didn't," she says, but she can't bring herself to pull away. It's too nice, being pressed against Enobaria.
"I did. And it was great, just as good as I expected."
It's nice to hear, even if Johanna can't completely believe her. Enobaria gets up and walks out of the room, then comes back, tossing Johanna the pill bottles. "I'm going to make dinner. You can sleep for a bit, but take your pills first."
The next day, Johanna wakes up a bit disoriented until she remembers she's in Enobaria's bed. It's more of the same, but she has to go to the clinic to check in on the medications. She takes the tram and waits for her appointment, and is seen soon enough by Dr. Bishop. "It works, kind of," she reports. "I can eat, usually, but the pain is only a little better, and I am still stumbling over stuff. And the blurry vision is still there."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," the doctor says. "Tell me about the stumbling, and the vision."
Johanna supposes the last time she was here, she had such bad nausea and pain, that was all they talked about. She explains the headaches, how they mess with her balance and her vision, and the doctor asks her to walk up and down the hall. Then they have her lay on a table while a machine takes images of her head. She gets a bad feeling when the doctor is gone for a while, and comes back with her clipboard in hand. "You said you had a seizure, before?" she asks.
Johanna nods. "In District 13, during a combat simulation."
"So it was witnessed."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I suspect what is happening is a swelling of the lining of the brain. It probably occurred as a combination of the inflammation from the electrocution, and the head trauma you endured during your capture during the war. The symptoms all line up: nausea, dizziness, headaches, the stumbling, vision problems, and seizures. The imaging can't confirm it, but it does point us in that direction."
"How do we fix it?" she asks, pleased at least to know what's wrong with her, even if it is terrifying. She pictures her brain literally being crushed by a swollen bubble around it. Of course her head hurts.
Dr. Bishop does not smile, not even in that pitying way Healers have. "There is no cure. We can change your medications to offer better symptom relief, to help with things like-"
Johanna doesn't hear the rest, because she's already left. She had thought she was mature enough to stop running away from her problems, but she was wrong. She didn't like what the doctor was saying, and so she chose to leave. She feels stupid the second she's back out on the street, but she also feels like she can breathe again. No one but she knows what was wrong with her, and so it feels like it might not be real. Like she can just pretend that there's still a reality where there is a cure, where one day she will feel better and she won't have the eternal headache and she can walk and see normally, and food won't make her want to vomit.
She takes the tram home, and again, she imagines the stupid soldiers, the ones who did this to her, walking free. She scans the face of every military man on the tram, trying to see if they match her memory of those guards. But her memory is so shit now because of them that she can't even know if she'd be able to pick them out of a crowd. When she gets off at the apartment, she imagines killing herself for the first time in a long time. Because that's what the doctor had told her, isn't it? That she would be this miserable until she died?
But she knows she can't, because she has Enobaria now. She has a life here and she spent all this time surviving the war, she has to keep going, even if it's just this stupid, pathetic life.
In the lobby of the apartment she runs into Gale Hawthorne. "I'm sorry," he says, grabbing her arms, making sure she won't fall. "I wasn't watching where I was going."
"Shouldn't you be at work?" she asks, because it's true, but also because she's deflecting. The last thing she wants is for him to ask her about herself, and so it's important to turn the conversation around on him early.
He shrugs. "Might quit," he says. He looks at her again, as if seeing her for the first time. She wonders if her misery is plastered on her face. "Want to get a drink?"
She joins him at the tavern nearest their apartment and wonders what to drink. She hardly ever drinks anymore, after the temperance in District 13 and then her near constant nausea. She takes one of her pills and orders a white liquor and soda, and he laughs. "That's a very District 12 drink."
She knows it is; it was Haymitch that taught her to drink it. Her heart aches to think about him now, about how she might never see him again, and even if she does, what did it matter? He made his choices and so did she, so what were they anymore? But she sips the drink and it's surprisingly nostalgic, and she wonders if he ever does anything that makes him think of her.
"Why are you going to quit your job?" she asks, as they're settled on a table in the back. He's got a large mug of beer, and there's a basket of peanuts and pretzels between them, and he's got foam on his upper lip.
"I don't know if this is possible. I think military strategy is the only thing I'm good at, and even so I'm struggling. I mean, Katniss would lose her mind if she saw what we're trying to do."
Johanna doesn't know what Gale is trying to do. She has no idea what his job is. But she knows that he and Katniss aren't on good terms, anymore, so she wonders what the sense of dwelling on her opinion is. It's nice to think about this, for a bit, she thinks, rather than about herself, about her swollen brain that won't ever go back to normal. "Give it up because you think you ought to, not because it'll make Katniss upset," she says. "I promise she's not making any of her decisions based on how you feel."
"What about you?" he asks.
"What about me?" She takes another sip of her liquor. She's only halfway through and she can feel herself warming.
"They're trying to combine the military from District 13 with the Peacekeepers in District 2. Does it make you upset?"
She bites her lip. It's a complicated question, and not really one where her opinion matters much. But more importantly, it meant that her stupid hypothetical, the paranoia she has been feeling about the prison guards finding their way to District 2 was possible. They could be here, after all. "Everyone makes me upset," she says, trying to keep the edge of fear out of her voice.
"Except Enobaria," he adds.
"Except Enobaria," she confirms. Why deny it?
They finish their drinks and walk back across the street just as the commuter trams are coming in, and she sees Enobaria disembark, a tall blonde beside her. "Jo!" Enobaria calls, both of them walking up. Then, quietly, "Have you been drinking?"
"I got one drink with Gale," she says, a little annoyed. She wants to tell Enobaria about the appointment, but she can't right now, with this other woman right there.
"Well, this is Lyme," Enobaria says, hiding her annoyance at the mention of Gale. "Lyme, this is Johanna. Lyme was a Victor from District 2, but she never came back as a Mentor. And Johanna and I live together here," Enobaria says. Enobaria kisses her, and Johanna kisses back, pulling her close. "I need to talk to you later," she says.
Enobaria nods. "I'm glad to see you. Ophelia called the vineyard worried because you hadn't come over, I told her you'd call when I got home, as long as everything is alright."
She had forgotten to go see the girls. Enobaria was upset because she had been drinking with Gale Hawthorne instead of doing homework with her nieces, and she couldn't explain herself properly because someone else was there. "Of course, I'll use the phone in the lobby."
"I was going to suggest we all have dinner, if you're feeling alright," Enobaria says. "Want to go to that place you like around the block?"
And what right does Johanna have to say no? She wants to curl up into a ball under the covers, to come to terms with the fact that she is going to be in pain forever, and that the men who tortured her and Enobaria may be their literal neighbors, but Enobaria wants to do something with a friend, and she's already missed one obligation that day.
She calls Antonia's and explains to the girls that her medical appointment ran late and she'll be there the next day, and in the future she'll call if she can't make it, and then she joins Lyme and Enobaria to walk to the restaurant. On the way, she comes to realize they know each other well, the kind of vibe she had with Finnick, perhaps. Lovers once, but no longer. And it aches, because it reminds her of the pit of emptiness inside her where Finnick once was. And the more she looks at Lyme, the more she sees how much she is lacking.
Lyme is tall, with blonde hair and a muscular frame and breasts and hips and she's smart, talking about all sorts of things from politics to art to other Districts' culture, and she's funny, making Enobaria laugh. Johanna feels small, unable to participate in the conversation, and she feels shitty when she excuses herself to go home early, saying that she feels ill, but in truth she does, and she hopes the two of them have a better time without her.
Enobaria crawls into Johanna's bed later, and Johanna wonders how long it's been. Hours? Was it past midnight? "I'm sorry," Johanna says. "I didn't mean to ruin dinner."
Enobaria's arms snake around her, pulling her close. "What happened at your appointment?" she asks.
"I don't want to talk about it." Her throat feels tight, and her eyes sting with tears. She can feel Enobaria's kisses on the back of her head, through her hair, and the affection makes it worse, somehow. "I left, I just ran out," she admits.
"Why?" Now Enobaria is serious, still.
"She told me there's no cure, that I'll be like this forever. I just… it's only been a few months and I'm already losing it."
"You didn't have to come to dinner," Enobaria says. "I'm sorry I sprung it on you."
This, at least, throws Johanna off-balance enough that she smiles. "You don't have to apologize," she says. "You do everything! You go to work, you got us this apartment, you cook the dinners. If you want to do a dinner, of course I'll come along. I-" she scrubs her hands over her face, trying to think of the right words. "It'll never be even, and I am trying to come to terms with that. I miss my old self."
Enobaria bites gently on Johanna's shoulder, then covers the area in kisses. "I don't want you to be in pain," she says. "But I don't mind this arrangement at all. If you don't have a job, if you just go out to see my nieces. I like the you of right now."
Johanna's snarky retort about Enobaria's ex being the exact opposite of her in every way dies on her lips as Enobaria slips a hand under the waistband of her pajama pants, and Johanna is reduced to moans.